s 
m7 

S85 
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1904 
MAIN 


UC-NRLF 


B   3    53fi    101 


A  TRIBUTE 


TO 


LEVI  STOCKBRIDGE, 

Professor  of  Agriculture  in  the  Massachusetts  Agricultural 
College  from  187 1  to  1882,  and  President  of    . 
the  College  from  1880  to  1882. 


By  WILLIAM    H?  BOWKER 

of  the  class  of  71. 


Read  at  the  Memorial  Exercises  at  Commencement. 
Amherst,  June  15,  1904. 


LOAN   STAC* 


GIFT 


• 

D<4 


Levi   Stockbridge. 


A  TRIBUTE 


TO 


LEVI     STOCRBRIDGE, 


BY 


WILLIAM  H.  BOWKER,  of  the  Class  of  '71. 
II 


Read  at   the    Memorial    Exercises    at  Commencement,  Am- 
Herst,  June  15,   1904. 


Professor  Stockbridge  was  very  near,  very  dear,  and  very  neces- 
sary to  "  his  boys  ;  "  and  he  counted  us  all  as  "  his  boys,"  whether 
we  had  just  entered  the  College  or  had  grown  weary  and  gray  in 
life's  battle.  He  was  a  father  to  many  and  a  counsellor  to  all.  We 
cannot  think  of  him  in  an  impersonal  way,  but  always  in  the  rela- 
tionship of  friend  and  comrade — one  to  whom  we  could  take  our 
troubles — one  who  would  meet  us  on  our  own  plane,  whether  we 
came  from  the  farm  or  from  the  city.  He  had  been  a  farmer's  boy 
himself — he  knew  the  boy's  environment,  his  habits  of  thought  and 
his  ambitions,  and  therefore  could  meet  him  on  a  common  ground  ; 
yet  he  was  equally  interested  and  successful  in  dealing  with  the  city- 
bred  boy.  He  loved  young  manhood  from  every  station  of  life.  To 
him  all  boys  possessed  great  possibilities,  and  he  felt  it  incumbent 
upon  him  to  find  these  out  and  direct  them  into  proper  channels. 

He  came  of  the  purest  New  England  stock,  of  a  large  and  devout 
family,  whose  parents,  like  so  many  others,  were  ambitious  for  their 
children,  but  not  able  to  give  each  one  a  college  education.  In  the 
Stockbridge  family  it  fell  to  the  lot  of  the  oldest  brother  to  enter 
Amherst  college.     Levi,  no  doubt,  felt  that  it  was  unfortunate,  if  not 


157 


wrong,  that  he  should  not  have  an  equal  chance,  but  very  likely  he 
never  expressed  regret  or  displeasure  to  his  parents.  He  was  one 
who  never  complained,  and  accepted  his  lot  with  the  duty  it  entailed. 
He  did  not,  however,  let  the  inability  of  his  parents  to  send  him  to 
college  daunt  his  courage  or  dampen  his  ambition,  for  when  his 
brother  was  taking  his  course  in  the  old  college,  Levi  was  studying 
the  same  books  at  home,  and  attending  many  of  the  lectures,  par- 
ticularly in  chemistry,  that  his  brother  studied  at  Amherst.  Thus, 
while  he  had  little  personal  contact  with  the  teacher  and  the  profes- 
sor— so  important  an  influence  in  moulding  young  life — he  was 
pursuing,  as  far  as  he  could,  many  of  the  studies  which  so  admirably 
fitted  him  for  his  life  work.  Very  likely  at  that  time  he  had  no 
thought  of  becoming  a  teacher,  much  less  a  moulder  of  character  in 
an  institution  new  in  the  field  of  education.  Rather,  he  was  fitting 
himself  to  be  a  good  citizen  and  a  good  farmer.  He  saw,  as  but  few 
others  did  at  that  time,  the  wide  field  and  the  great  need  of  the  edu- 
cated farmer.  He  had  read  the  works  of  Liebig,  the  founder  of 
agricultural  chemistry.  The  experiments  of  Lawes  and  Gilbert,  in  a 
field  which  he  afterwards  occupied  and  broadened,  were  not  unknown 
to  him.  He  was  familiar  with  the  teachings  of  Jethro  Trull,  and  I 
am  sure,  with  his  enthusiastic  nature,  he  must  have  enjoyed  the 
writings  of  Charles  Downing,  that  poet  of  the  orchard  and  philoso- 
pher of  the  garden.  As  a  young  man,  he  kept  in  touch  with  the 
proceedings  which  led  up  to  the  founding  of  the  Board  of  Agricul- 
ture, and  finally  of  this  College.  He  knew  and  respected  the  work 
of  Marshall  P.  Wilder,  the  philanthropic  merchant,  and  Simon 
Brown,  the  talented  agricultural  editor.  Just  who  was  his  prototype 
I  do  not  know,  but  he  must  have  been  of  a  high  order.  Perhaps  he 
has  left  somewhere  a  record  of  the  man  who  exercised  the  greatest 
influence  over  him.  There  is  rarely  a  man  who  cannot  point  to 
some  one  who,  earlier  or  later  in  life,  has  helped  to  shape  his  course, 
either  for  good  or  for  evil.  We  older  men,  in  our  contact  with  young 
men,  sometimes  forget  our  unconscious  influence  over  them,  but  the 
teacher  and  the  professor  in  a  college  should  never  do  so.  Profes- 
sor Stockbridge  always  remembered  his  relationship  to  the  student 
body,  and  yet  he  was  never  stilted  or  unapproachable.  Underneath 
his  quaint,  humorous  speech  and  sometimes  droll  ways,  there  was  a 
dignity  and  firmness  of  manner  which  the  boys  felt  and  respected. 


No  teacher  in  my  day  preserved  better  order  in  the  class  room,  and 
no  one  was  more  successful  with  his  classes. 

We  have  heard  to-day,  or  shall  hear,  of  his  work  in  connection 
with  the  establishment  and  upbuilding  of  this  College,  and  of  his 
scientific  and  practical  work  in  the  field  of  agriculture,  but  after  all, 
I  feel,  as  you  all  must  feel,  that  his  most  beneficent  influence,  his 
greatest  achievement,  was  his  personal,  close  relationship  to  the  stu- 
dent body  of  this  institution  ;  for  while  he  was  a  natural  instructor, 
clear,  brilliant  and  enthusiastic,  yet  he  was  greatest  and  best  as  friend 
and  adviser.  The  College  was  extremely  fortunate  in  having  at  the 
start  such  a  man — healthful,  helpful,  courageous,  buoyant  and  opti- 
mistic, but  always  possessed  of  good  judgment.  He  was  sunny, 
hopeful,  sane.  In  all  my  thirty-seven  years'  acquaintance  with  him 
I  never  saw  him  cast  down. 

Many  of  us  found  him  a  helpful  friend  in  a  substantial  way.  I  do 
not  know  how  many  young  men  owe  the  completion  of  their  college 
course  to  his  financial  aid.  I  fear  many  would  not  have  gone  through 
this  institution  if  he  had  not  helped  them.  We  can  all  see  him  now, 
at  least  some  of  us  can,  when  we  were  strapped — and  what  young 
man  does  not  get  in  that  fix  now  and  then  ? — we  can  see  him,  after 
he  had  asked  us  a  few  leading  questions,  put  in  such  a  way  as  never 
to  disclose  his  feelings  but  always  ours — he  was  as  keen  as  the  keen- 
est lawyer — we  can  see  him  pull  out  his  old  leather  wallet  from  a 
pair  of  ungainly-fitting  trousers,  leisurely  unstrap  it,  and  hand  out  a 
five  or  a  ten  dollar  bill  without  further  comment.  How  relieved  we 
were  !  How  the  clouds  lifted,  and  how  life  took  on  a  new  hope  for 
us !  I  sometimes  think  he  took  a  secret  delight  in  our  temporary 
discomfiture,  and  in  our  manifest  pleasure  when  the  ordeal  was  over, 
for  the  twinkle  of  his  eye  and  the  smile  of  his  lip  were  very  expres- 
sive and  will  ever  be  remembered  by  his  numerous  boys.  I  wonder 
if  he  always  kept  account  of  the  aid  which  he  gave.  I  hope  and  be- 
lieve that  the  boys  did,  and  returned  it  with  interest ;  but  whether 
that  was  the  case  or  not,  he  enjoyed  helping  them,  for  he  had  been 
there  himself.  Moreover,  he  had  been  taught  that  it  was  good  to 
cast  his  bread  upon  the  wraters,  knowing  that  it  would  come  back  to 
some  one,  if  not  to  him,  in  God's  own  way  and  time.  He  wanted  no 
young  man  to  fail  of  going  through  his  beloved  institution  for  lack 
of  funds  ;  and  yet  he  believed  in  every  man  helping  himself.  If  he 
had  been  a  millionaire  he  would  not  have  been  lavish  in  his  aid — he 


would  have  assisted  only  those  who  assisted  themselves.  He  was  a 
keen  reader  of  character.  He  sifted  the  wheat  from  the  chaff,  and 
no  doubt  many  a  boy  stayed  in  college  and  many  a  boy  went  away 
because  of  the  advice  which  he  gave  him,  in  that  kindly  way  which 
never  offended.  Probably  there  was  not  in  this  institution  during 
his  day  a  student  who  did  not  at  some  time  consult  him.  Thus  he 
helped  to  mould  as  best  he  knew — and  for  the  best,  as  I  believe — the 
life  of  every  man  who  came  under  his  influence. 

What  a  work  he  undertook  !  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  when 
he  came  from  the  Hadley  farm  to  take  charge  of  the  College  farm 
and  to  superintend  the  erection  of  the  first  buildings,  it  was  practi- 
cally the  first  agricultural  college  to  be  started  in  this  country.  The 
field  was  absolutely  new  ;  there  was  not  a  model  to  go  by.  The 
buildings  were  to  be  built  and  arranged  not  only  for  academic  but  for 
practical  training.  Again,  when  he  undertook  instruction  in  agricul- 
ture there  was  not  another  chair  of  agriculture  in  the  country,  and 
there  was  no  one  to  whom  he  could  turn  for  advice.  He  had  to  blaze 
the  way,  without  books  and  without  chart.  And  how  well  he  did  it ! 
His  lectures  were  to  me  the  most  interesting  of  any  I  attended.  They 
were  clear,  concise  and  always  practical.  They  could  not  be  other- 
wise, for  he  possessed  a  clear,  logical  mind  and  a  terse  form  of 
speech.     His  English  was  exceptionally  good. 

He  had  an  original  and  inventive  mind.  He  saw,  as  others  did 
not  see,  the  necessity  of  taking  what  chemists,  botanists,  geologists 
and  other  scientists  had  worked  out,  and  of  applying  it  to  practical 
ends  ;  stripping  it,  as  far  as  possible,  of  all  technicality,  and  making 
it  plain  and  simple,  not  only  to  the  farmer's  boy  here  in  the  College 
but  to  the  father  at  home.  He  popularized  and  made  assimi- 
lable the  teachings  of  all  the  sciences  related  to  agriculture,  but  he 
lectured  to  a  larger  audience  than  the  students  of  the  College — he 
spoke  to  the  farmers  of  the  land. 

It  is  claimed  that  agriculture  is  not  a  science,  but  an  art — that 
there  is  no  need  of  a  chair  of  agriculture  in  any  college  ;  and  I 
sometimes  think  that  it  is  true,  for  agriculture  is  made  up  of  so  many 
collateral  branches.  Stockbridge  realized  this,  and  by  his  great  in- 
sight and  practical  training  was  able  to  glean  from  all  sources  of 
knowledge  that  which  was  essential  to  the  upbuilding  of  agriculture. 
As  he  taught  and  exemplified  agriculture  in  his  day,  he  demonstrated 
the  value  of  the  chair  of  agriculture   in  all  our  agricultural  colleges. 


He  ploughed  and  sowed  for  all  of  them,  and  all  of  them  are  reaping 
the  fruits  of  his  labor. 

May  I  be  somewhat  personal,  for  I  take  it  that  personal  reminis- 
cences will  be  interesting  at  this  time  ?  I  came  here  a  green  lad 
from  a  small  farm  in  northern  Worcester  county,  and  I  shall  not  for- 
get my  first  meeting  with  Professor  Stockbridge.  I  can  see  him  stand- 
ing on  what  is  now  the  campus,  superintending  some  of  the  finishing 
touches  to  the  buildings,  on  which  the  paint  was  not  dry — a  tall, 
spare  man,  dressed  in  a  rough  suit  of  clothes  and  a  slouch  hat,  with 
sandy  hair  and  beard  slightly  streaked  with  grey,  with  keen,  kindly- 
eyes  looking  out  from  beneath  shaggy  eyebrows — a  striking  charac- 
ter in  the  full  vigor  of  manhood.  He  was  thirty-seven  years  old 
when  he  began  the  work  of  his  life,  and  eighty-four  when  he  died. 
As  you  may  imagine,  he  was  far  from  my  picture  of  a  college  profes- 
sor, who  should  have  been  dressed  in  black  clothes,  with  gray  beard 
and  gold-bowed  spectacles,  and  of  whom  I  expected  to  stand  in  awe. 
We  were  all  standing  at  that  time  in  a  fifty-acre  field  surrounded 
with  Virginia  fences  and  filled  in  here  and  there  with  corn  fields  and 
apple  trees  and  tumble-down  tobacco  sheds.  An  incongruous  pic- 
ture it  made,  with  the  modern  buildings  towering  above  it  all. 
But  the  impression  which  he  made  upon  me  was  that  he  was  one  of 
our  kind — an  approachable  man,  who  could  drive  a  yoke  of  oxen  or 
preside  at  a  town  meeting  with  equal  ease.  Boys  get  curious  im- 
pressions, but  I  know  it  went  through  my  mind  that  if  I  got  home- 
sick— which  I  did — I  could  go  to  him  and  talk  it  over — which  I  did 
not  do,  however,  because  it  is  a  boy's  way  to  bluff  it  through. 

The  next  recollection  I  have  of  him  is  in  the  management  of  a  class 
of  sixty  unruly  chaps  from  farm,  city  and  village,  in  our  first  lesson  in 
husking  out  a  field  of  corn.  It  was  a  bright  October  afternoon,  and 
although  I  was  brought  up  amid  beautiful  scenery  I  shall  never  for- 
get this  picture  and  its  superb  setting.  It  had  its  healthful  influence 
on  us,  as  it  must  have  had  on  those  who  have  followed  us.  Neither 
shall  I  forget  his  masterful  and  tactful  way  of  handling  us  ;  and  just 
here  let  me  say  that  I  think  his  tact  and  judgment  were,  after  all, 
his  greatest  gifts,  which  he  had  occasion  many  times  afterwards  to 
bring  successfully  into  play  in  his  management  of  the  student  body 
in  manual  training,  then  a  new  departure  in  college  education.  We 
must  have  been  a  sore  problem  to  him,  for  it  should  be  remembered 
that  we  were  the  pioneer  class — the  experimental  class — and  he  and 


we  were  green  together.  The  harvesting  of  this  corn  crop  was  a 
splendid  object  lesson  to  us  in  the  management  of  men  and  teams 
and  in  the  selection  of  seed,  but  I  think  it  also  opened  his  eyes  to 
some  things. 

I  next  remember  him  taking  a  class  into  the  hay  field  to  learn  how 
to  make  hay,  to  run  a  mowing  machine  and  to  use  the  scythe  in 
trimming  out.  Some  of  us  knew  how  to  do  it,  for  we  had  come  from 
the  hay  field,  but  there  were  some  from  the  city  who  had  never  seen 
a  scythe — at  least,  had  never  swung  one.  When  Herrick,  a  beam- 
ing boy  from  the  city  of  Lawrence,  looking  through  big,  round,  rim- 
less glasses,  started  in  with  his  scythe,  everybody  else  fled  for  fear  of 
accident.  Stockbridge  said,  "  Keep  your  heel  down,  Herrick  !  "  and 
Herrick,  not  knowing  what  he  meant,  plunged  away,  stamping  his 
heel  into  the  wet  soil  and  running  the  point  of  his  scythe  into  the 
ground,  the  rest  of  us  laughing  at  him.  Finally,  "  Old  Prof,"  with 
infinite  patience,  stepped  up  to  him  and  said,  "  Young  man,  it  is  not 
the  heel  of  your  boot,  but  the  shank  or  the  heel  of  the  scythe  which 
you  must  keep  to  the  ground  if  you  would  cut  a  swath  in  this  life." 
Young  Herrick  was  cut  off  by  the  great  reaper  too  early  to  demon- 
strate the  teachings  of  Stockbridge. 

The  next  time  I  remember  him  as  standing  out  prominently,  to  us 
at  least,  was  in  the  fall  of  '68,  when  Grant  was  first  elected  to  the 
presidency  of  the  United  States.  When  the  news  of  the  election 
came  to  town,  a  glorification  meeting  was  held  to  celebrate  the  vic- 
tory. All  the  students  of  both  colleges,  of  whatever  political  faith, 
joined  in  a  procession  and  marched  around  to  the  professors'  houses, 
both  of  the  old  and  the  new  college,  calling  each  man  out  for  a 
speech.  We  began  down  town,  and  were  first  addressed  by  Presi- 
dent Stearns,  Professors  Seelye,  Tyler  and  I  think  by  dear  old  Pro- 
fessor Snell,  one  of  the  sunniest  men  I  ever  met ;  then  up  to  Presi- 
dent Clark's  house,  where  he  gave  us  a  rousing  reception  and  a  good 
speech.  Finally,  we  lined  up  in  front  of  "  Prof.  Stock's  "  house. 
Stockbridge  expected  us,  and  evidently  had  been  preparing  some- 
thing for  us.  I  can  see  him  now,  coming  down  the  rickety  stairs  of 
his  little  old  woodshed  office  and  deliberately  walking  up  to  the  door- 
step in  front  of  the  house.  I  cannot  recall  his  language,  but  I  re- 
member his  eulogy  of  Lincoln,  and  then  of  Grant,  who  had  been 
Lincoln's  mainstay,  closing  with  a  splendid  outline  of  the  future  for 
"  us  boys,"  as  he  called  us,  who  were  then  coming  on  the  stage,  with 


a  plea  for  good  citizenship  and  patriotism,  as  exemplified  by  these 
two  great  Americans.  It  was  voted  by  the  students  of  both  colleges 
to  be  the  best  speech  of  the  evening. 

Shall  we  ever  forget  him  as  a  writer  and  public  speaker  ?  He  was 
clear,  earnest,  often  brilliant,  and  always  sensible ;  but  if  he  hap- 
pened to  be  pleading  for  his  beloved  College  or  for  the  cause  of 
agriculture,  then  it  was  that  he  rose  to  the  occasion,  convincing  and 
unanswerable ! 

May  I  again  be  personal?  Perhaps  no  one  has  had  closer  busi- 
ness relations  with  Professor  Stockbridge  than  I  during  the  past 
thirty  years.  I  came  to  know  him  intimately  in  a  business  way.  I 
touched  him  on  the  money  side,  and  it  is  said  that  if  one  would 
know  a  man's  true  character,  one  must  have  financial  transactions 
with  him.  In  all  my  thirty  years'  association  wirh  Professor  Stock- 
bridge  I  never  found  him  sharp  or  underhanded.  He  always  took  a 
broad,  clear,  business-like  view  of  every  situation,  and  was  fair  and 
liberal  in  his  dealings.  When  he  placed  the  Stockbridge  formulas  in 
in  my  hands — I  was  then  a  young  man  of  twenty-five — I  could  but  feel 
that  it  was  a  mark  of  confidence,  for  there  were  large  and  rich  concerns 
in  New  York  that  had  applied  to  him  for  the  opportunity  to  manu- 
facture them  under  his  name.  It  was  a  gray,  cold  December  day 
when  the  trade  was  closed  in  his  woodshed  office.  I  can  see  him 
now,  with  his  long  legs  stretched  out,  toasting  his  shins  at  the  little 
old  broken-down  stove  which  would  hold  only  a  stick  at  a  time,  and 
I  remember  wondering  how  he  ever  got  time  to  write  his  lectures  and 
keep  that  stove  going.  When  he  was  about  to  sign  the  agreement, 
he  remarked  :  "  I  know  you  ;  you  have  been  one  of  my  boys  and  one 
of  our  College  family,  and  I  think  I'll  take  my  chances  with  you."  I 
hope  he  never  regretted  the  step,  and  I  think  he  did  not,  for  he  vol- 
untarily remained  a  director  in  our  company,  in  which  he  took  a 
great  interest,  to  the  day  of  his  death.  And  let  me  say,  in  passing, 
that  he  always  insisted  upon  our  business  being  done  on  a  high 
plane,  and  was  as  jealous  of  the  good  report  of  the  company  as  of 
the  formulas  which  bore  his  name.  He  set  a  high  standard  and  ex- 
pected us  to  live  up  to  it. 

It  will  be  well  to  record  here  that  the  first  money  received  by 
Professor  Stockbridge  in  royalties  for  the  use  of  his  name  (his  for- 
mulas were  given  to  the  world  for  anybody  to  use)  was  devoted  to 
experimental  work  at  Amherst,  which  practically  laid  the  foundation 


8 

for  the  first  experiment  station  to  be  established  in  this  country  in 
connection  with  an  agricultural  college,  and  the  second  station  to  be 
incorporated  in  the  United  States.  The  first  was  incorporated  by 
Connecticut  at  New  Haven,  and  the  second  by  Massachusetts  at 
Amherst. 

These  two  stations  were  afterwards  consolidated  with  the  govern- 
ment stations,  and  along  with  forty-two  others,  one  in  each  state, 
were  endowed  under  the  Hatch  bill,  and  are  now  known  as  the  Hatch 
Experiment  Stations.  But  to  Johnson  and  Atwater,  of  Connecticut, 
among  the  greatest  of  living  agricultural  chemists,  and  to  Stock- 
bridge  and  Clark,  of  Massachusetts,  the  wisest  of  practical  educa- 
tors, belongs  the  credit  of  inaugurating  this  great  educational  move- 
ment. Out  of  it,  also,  has  grown  the  enlarged  and  vigorous  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture  at  Washington,  which  in  connection  with  the 
stations  and  the  agricultural  colleges  is  doing  yeoman's  service  for 
the  advancement  of  knowledge.  These  stations  and  the  agricultural 
colleges,  each  supplementing  the  other — the  one  to  develop  men  and 
the  other  to  develop  methods — may  well  be  considered  the  renais- 
sance of  our  new  agriculture. 

I  want  to  mention  another  personal  recollection.  In  one  of  his 
lectures— or  talks,  as  he  liked  to  call  them — the  question  of  the  large 
personal  fortunes  that  were  beginning  to  pile  up  was  under  discus- 
sion. He,  as  you  all  know,  was  very  democratic  in  his  feelings,  in- 
clined to  side  with  the  under  dog,  whether  the  dog  was  right  or 
wrong.  He  regretted  the  advantage  which  the  crafty  and  unscrupu- 
lous were  taking  of  the  people  and  of  the  laws  of  the  people,  in 
amassing  wealth  in  lawful,  but,  as  he  thought,  improper  ways.  And 
I  remember  his  flashing  out  one  day  with  this  remark  : 

"No  man  has  a  right  to  more  than  a  stated  amount  of  property,  a 
million  if  you  please.  If  he  amasses  more  than  the  allotted  amount 
he  should  yield  up  the  excess  to  the  state.  The  prizes  should  be 
divided  more  equally  and  distributed  more  widely." 

When  asked  how  he  would  accomplish  it,  he  replied  : 

"  Through  the  probate  court,  through  which  all  estates  must  pass 
sooner  or  later,  or  by  some  other  effective  means." 

I  suppose  he  meant  that  if  a  man's  estate  was  found  by  official 
appraisal  to  be  more  than  the  allotted  amount  he  would  have  the 
excess  pass  to  the  government,  and  thus  he  would  hope  to  check 


greed  and  selfish  ambition.  This  remark  was  made  more  than  thirty 
years  ago,  and  he  lived  to  see,  in  the  inheritance  tax,  a  partial  step 
in  that  direction.  He  probably  felt  then,  as  many  have  come  to  feel 
since,  that  the  game  should  be  played  more  fairly,  and,  if  necessary, 
that  the  rules  of  the  game  should  be  modified ;  that  the  prizes,  as  in 
schools  and  universities,  should  be  as  many  as  possible,  but  lim- 
ited in  size — a  maximum  cum  la  tide,  the  highest  with  praise — beyond 
which  no  one  should  go.  And  why  not  ?  If  our  universities  find  it 
wise  to  fix  a  maximum  prize,  and  our  boys  in  their  games  find  it 
necessary  to  place  a  handicap  on  the  strongest  player,  to  equalize 
conditions  and  to  make  the  game  fairer  and  more  interesting,  why 
not,  in  the  game  of  life,  have  some  kind  of  bar  to  the  crafty  and  un- 
scrupulous, to  the  end  that  the  prizes  shall  be  more  fairly  divided 
and  more  widely  distributed  ?  Stockbridge's  sympathies  went  out  to 
the  weak,  and  if  he  had  been  born  in  this  century  I  believe  he  would 
have  become,  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word,  a  socialist.  He  abhorred 
a  plutocracy,  and  believed  in  every  man  having  a  fair  chance. 

You  all  know  how  useful  and  influential  he  was  in  the  early  years 
of  the  College.  I  wonder  if  you  know  how  many  times,  when  it 
was  without  friends  and  without  funds  to  pay  current  ex- 
penses, he  raised  the  money  at  the  local  bank  on  his  own  notes,  or 
on  the  College  notes  endorsed  by  himself.  I  remember  a  bank 
friend  of  his  taking  him  to  task  for  doing  it,  saying  that  if  he  had  to 
pay  the  notes  it  would  ruin  him.     Stockbridge's  reply  was  prophetic  : 

"  Oh,  I  am  not  afraid  !  Never  you  worry !  The  state  of  Massachu- 
setts has  entered  into  a  contract  with  the  United  States  government 
to  maintain  this  institution,  and  the  State  of  Massachusetts  will  never 
go  back  on  her  contract.  What  is  more,  some  day  she  will  see  the 
error  of  her  way,  and  will  come  to  the  rescue  of  this  institution  and 
do  all  that  may  reasonably  be  asked  of  her.  I  tell  you,  it  is  going  to 
be  a  success !  " 

We  have  lived — and,  what  is  more  gratifying,  he  lived — to  see 
that  remark  come  true.  Not  only  did  the  state  honor  the  paper 
which  he  endorsed,  but  it  has  given  thousands  upon  thousands  of 
dollars  since  then,  and  will  give,  as  we  require  it,  all  that  we  may 
need  for  the  development  of  this  institution.  It  stands  here  to-day 
a  monument  to  Levi  Stockbridge  as  much  as  to  any  other  man  in 
Massachusetts. 


Let  us  hope  that  some  day  there  will  be  erected  on  the  campus 
a  statue  to  his  memory,  or,  better  still,  a  building  which  shall  be 
known  as  "  Stockbridge  Hall,"  for  the  agricultural  department,  in 
which  shall  be  placed  a  tablet,  stating  in  simple  terms  what  he  did 
for  the  College  and  for  the  young  men  who  came  under  his  benefi- 
cent influence.  The  impetus  and  the  stimulus  which  he  gave  to  our 
lives  by  his  splendid  manhood  and  buoyant,  hopeful  outlook  on  life, 
have  left  their  imprint  upon  us  all,  and  are  an  inheritance  which  we 
shall  hand  on  to  those  who  come  after  us.  The  bright,  cheery  boy 
from  the  Hadley  farm,  self-taught,  lives  not  only  in  this  institution, 
but  in  the  lives  and  character  of  hundreds  of  students  who  remember 
him  and  ever  will  remember  him  as  "  dear  old  Prof.  Stock,"  whom 
they  all  loved. 

If  I  were  asked  what  was  Stockbridge's  greatest  contribution 
to  agriculture,  I  should  say  that  it  was  not  his  formulas  for  crop 
feeding  by  which  he  is  so  widely  known ;  for,  useful  as  these  were, 
they  were  but  stepping  stones  to  a  better  knowledge  of  the  object 
and  use  of  fertilizers.  His  greatest  contribution  to  agriculture,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  was  his  new  conception  of  the  office  of  fertility  in  farm 
economy.  Up  to  the  time  of  the  publication  of  the  Stockbridge  for- 
mulas, the  practice  had  been  to  manure  the  soil  in  order  to  restore 
lost  fertility  and  to  supply  deficiencies  in  the  soil,  as  ascertained  by 
a  chemical  or  crop  analysis  of  the  soil.  Stockbridge  saw  that  this 
method  was  not  a  practical  solution  of  the  problem,  for  neither 
chemical  nor  crop  analysis  of  the  soil  could  be  relied  upon  as  a  true 
guide  to  its  enrichment.  The  chemist  disclosed  too  much  that  was 
misleading  and  the  crop  too  little  that  was  conclusive.  But,  what  is 
more  to  the  point,  Stockbridge  saw  that  we  had  taken  hold  of  the 
problem  at  the  wrong  end.  It  was  not  the  soil,  but  the  crop,  that  we 
should  first  consider.  We  should  study  it  and  its  needs,  and  supply 
it,  as  far  as  we  were  able,  with  the  necessary  elements  of  plant  nutri- 
tion by  the  use  of  properly  balanced  manures.  In  a  word,  he  turned 
from  the  inert  soil,  which  could  not  answer,  to  the  living  crop,  which 
could,  and  put  this  question  to  it : 

"  What  shall  I  supply  you  in  excess  of  what  you  may  obtain  from 
the  soil  or  air  by  your  own  habits  and  conditions  of  growth  to  make 
you  a  perfect  and  profitable  crop  ?  " 


On  the  other  hand  the  farmer  was  asking  him  : 

"  What  shall  I  use  to  produce  profitable  crops — how  much  and  in 
what  form? " 

Starting  then  from  the  crop,  with  the  farmer's  question  ever  spur- 
ring him  on  and  with  such  data  as  he  could  find,  he  worked  out  his 
well  known  formulas,  which  were  published  broadcast  in  1876.  And 
let  me  say  here  that  besides  being  published  in  many  agricultural 
papers  and  reports  more  than  half  a  million  pamphlets  containing 
them  were  distributed. 

He  did  not  claim  that  his  formulas  were  infallible,  for  he  antici- 
pated and  announced,  what  we  soon  discovered  in  practice,  that  they 
would  need  to  be  modified,  as  experience  should  point  the  way. 
They  served,  however,  a  greater  purpose  even  than  Stockbridge 
dreamed  at  the  time — they  centered  our  thought  and  our  study  on 
the  crop.  From  that  time  on  we  discussed  plant  food  and  not  soil 
food — plant  feeding  instead  of  soil  manuring.  "  Feed  the  crop 
rather  than  the  soil,"  was  a  frequent  expression  at  this  time. 

It  is  well  to  observe  here  that  crop  formulas  were  not  new.  Ville 
and  others  had  published  various  sets.  The  Stockbridge  formulas, 
however,  were  unique  in  this :  that  they  were  based  not  alone  on  the 
analysis  of  the  crop,  but  on  its  power  of  absorption  from  all  the 
sources  of  fertility — from  soil,  air  and  water.  Thus  Stockbridge 
boldly  prescribed  : 

"To  produce  fifty  bushels  of  shelled  corn  per  acre  (without  any 
stable  manure)  and  its  natural  proportion  of  stover,  more  than  the 
natural  yield  of  the  land,  apply  so  many  pounds  each  of  nitrogen, 
potash  and  phosphoric  acid.  Or  to  produce  a  stated  quantity  of 
tobacco  leaf  of  the  desired  color  and  texture,  apply  a  stated  quantity 
of  plant  food  elements,  preferably  in  the  form  of  sulphates  and 
nitrates." 

Here  then,  for  the  first  time,  a  definite  way  was  prescribed  to  at- 
tain a  definite  object.  It  was  a  startling  proposition,  and,  as  might 
be  expected,  it  brought  ridicule  from  many  quarters,  but  Stockbridge 
did  not  allow  that  to  disturb  him.  He  knew  that  the  commercial 
farmer  needed  a  tangible  starting  point.  He  knew  that  to  consider 
the  needs  of  the  crop,  the  living  thing,  both  as  to  amount  and  kind 
of  plant  food,  rather  than  the  needs  of  the  soil,  an  unknown  and  un- 
knowable quantity,  was  not  only  a  common  sense  way  of  meeting  the 
problem  of  plant  nutrition,  but  a  very  direct  way  of  helping  the  farmer 


out  of  the  quagmire  of  doubt.  The  formulas  might  not  be  accurate  ; 
in  some  cases  they  might  supply  excessive  amounts  of  plant  food 
elements  and  apparently  be  very  wasteful,  yet  he  believed  that  in  the 
end  it  was  better  economy  to  apply  too  much  and  insure  a  crop,  than 
use  too  little  and  lose  a  crop.  Nevertheless,  as  Professor  Stockbridge 
anticipated  would  be  the  case,  the  fertilizers  based  on  his  formulas 
were  modified  from  time  to  time  as  we  gained  light,  chiefly  by  the 
reduction  of  nitrogen  and  the  increase  of  phosphoric  acid,  as  it  was 
found  that  many  crops  were  able  to  gather  from  natural  sources, 
through  bacterial  action  or  otherwise,  some  part  of  the  required 
nitrogen,  and  that  an  excess  of  available  phosphoric  acid  would  has- 
ten maturity.  It  was  also  found  that  to  supply  the  full  complement 
of  nitrogen  in  addition  to  what  the  crop  would  assimilate  for  itself 
tended  in  many  cases  to  produce  an  unbalanced  growth  ;  yet,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  was  found  that  in  some  cases,  especially  where  a 
forced  growth  or  a  tender  leaf  was  required,  an  excess  of  nitrogen 
was  desirable.  Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  crop  was  both  the  start- 
ing and  the  objective  point.  Not  only  its  chemical  needs,  but  its 
habits  and  conditions  of  growth,  the  object  for  which  it  was  grown, 
and  its  market  qualities,  were  all  factors  which  influenced  the  compo- 
sition or  modification  of  the  fertilizers  ;  and  the  same  factors  are  as 
potent  to-day.  Since,  then,  it  was  the  crop  that  chiefly  concerned 
Professor  Stockbridge,  how  natural  and  sensible  was  his  ques- 
tion :  "  What  shall  I  supply  you  to  make  you  a  perfect  and  profita- 
ble crop  ?  " 

Let  us  now  consider  for  a  moment  another  phase  of  the  subject, 
namely,  the  potential  fertility  of  the  soil,  or  "  the  natural  yield,"  to 
which  Professor  Stockbridge  frequently  referred.  It  has  been  known 
for  a  long  time  that  practically  all  tillable  soils  are  rich  in  plant  food 
elements,  and  yet  many  of  them  are  barren,  and  most  of  them  will 
not  produce  profitable  crops  without  the  aid  of  manure  or  fertilizer.* 

*  Professor  Frederick  D.  Chester,  of  Delaware,  states  in  an  able  bulletin  recently  pub- 
lished: 

'"An  average  of  the  results  of  49  analyses  of  the  typical  soils  of  the  United  States 
showed  per  acre  for  the  first  eight  inches  of  surface  2600  pounds  of  nitrogen,  4800  pounds  of 
phosphoric  acid  and  13,400  pounds  of  potash.  The  average  yield  of  wheat  in  the  United 
States  is  14  bushels  per  acre.  Such  a  crop  will  remove  29.7  pounds  of  nitrogen,  9.5  pounds 
of  phosphoric  acid  and  13.7  pounds  of  potash. 

"  Now,  if  all  the  potential  nitrogen,  phosphoric  acid  and  potash  could  be  rendered 
available,  there  is  present  in  such  an  average  soil,  in  the  first  eight  inches,  enough  nitrogen 
to  last  90  years,  enough  phosphoric  acid  for  500  years,  and  enough  potash  for  1000  years. 

"  This  is  what  is  meant  by  potential  soil  fertility,  and  yet  such  a  soil  possessing  this 
same  high  potential  fertility  may,  under  certain  conditions,  be  so  actually  barren  of  results 
to  the  farmer  as  to  lead  him  to  believe  it  absolutely  devoid  of  plant  food.'' 


i3 

In  a  word,  potential  fertility  represents  plant  food  which  is  so 
tightly  locked  up  that  it  is  not  available  for  present  needs,  and  be- 
comes available  only  through  the  process  of  decay  and  disintegra- 
tion, which  is  too  slow  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the  commercial 
farmer.  Stockbridge  realized  the  situation,  but  instead  of  asking 
the  soil  how  much  of  the  potential  fertility  could  be  depended  upon 
for  each  crop  (a  question  which  will  never  be  satisfactorily  an- 
swered), he  went  to  the  crop  and  asked  it  how  much  it  was  necessary 
to  supply  for  a  stated  yield  over  and  above  the  natural  yield  of  the 
land.  In  all  cases  he  found  it  to  be  a  very  small  quantity.  For  the 
corn  crop  not  over  200  pounds  of  nitrogen,  potash  and  phosphoric 
acid  was  necessary,  which  the  crop  would  return  fifty  fold  (at  least 
five  tons  in  stalk  and  grain) — so  little  to  produce  so  much — and  yet 
if  this  little  quantity  of  200  pounds  was  not  supplied  the  crop  would 
be  a  failure. 

It  was  this  little  essential  balance  of  available  plant  food  which 
stood  between  success  and  failure  that  concerned  Professor  Stock- 
bridge,  as  it  concerns  every  farmer  to-day.  Although  it  was  small, 
he  did  not  deem  it  wise  to  depend  upon  the  potential  fertility  of  the 
soil  to  supply  it,  or  even  any  considerable  part  of  it.  For  the  com- 
mercial farmer  it  was  too  risky  and  uncertain.  To  insure  a  crop,  as 
far  as  one  was  able,  was  a  cardinal  principle  with  him  ;  not  to  do  it 
was  in  his  eyes  almost  a  crime.  But  he  felt  that  all  these  things 
would  right  themselves  as  we  came  to  know  more  about  farm  crops 
and  their  environment. 

As  bearing  on  the  economy  of  his  system  of  plant  feeding,  I  want 
to  quote  here  one  of  his  apt  illustrations.     He  said  in  effect : 

"  In  a  sense  the  farmer  is  a  manufacturer  and  the  soil  is  his  ma- 
chine, into  which  he  puts  plant  food,  and  out  of  which,  by  the  aid  of 
Nature  and  his  own  efforts,  he  takes  his  product  at  harvest  time.  If 
the  soil  machine  is  a  good  one,  so  much  the  better.  If  it  has  a 
balance  of  crop-producing  power  to  its  credit,  let  us  preserve  that 
balance  for  an  emergency.     Let  us  not  draw  on  it  for  present  needs." 

He  had  no  patience  with  the  so-called  single-element  doctrine, 
which  depends  for  its  success  on  the  potential  fertility — no  patience 
with  the  farmer  who  was  trying  to  find  out  for  himself  if  he  could 
leave  out  any  one  of  the  three  leading  elements  of  plant  nutrition 
(nitrogen,  potash  and  phosphoric  acid),  or  how  little  of  each  he  could 
get  along  with.     That  was  a  proper  subject  for  the  scientific  worker 


14 

to  investigate,  but  until  we  knew  more  about  it  the  practical  farmer, 
who  had  his  living  to  make  and  bills  to  pay,  should  not  tinker  with 
it.  To  Stockbridge  it  meant,  in  the  end,  improvident  farming.  At 
best,  the  farmer  had  to  take  great  chances,  especially  with  the 
weather — the  largest  factor  in  crop  raising,  over  which  he  had  no 
control ;  but  he  should  take  no  chances  with  the  things  which  he 
could  control.  Among  these  were  the  amount  and  kind  of  manure 
which  he  applied  to  his  crops.  Thus,  if  he  hoped  for  a  stated  crop 
he  should  at  least  fertilize  intelligently  for  that  crop.  For  the  man 
who  was  dependent  on  his  crops  any  other  course  was  unwise. 
Moreover,  any  other  course  would  leave  the  soil  machine  in  a  poorer 
condition  than  he  found  it.  Broadly  speaking,  to  encourage  him  to 
take  out  more  than  he  put  back  was  not  only  bad  economy,  but  bad 
morals,  and  should  be  discouraged,  for  in  the  end  it  would  lead  to 
crop  bankruptcy. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  farmers  appreciated  this  bold  course. 
As  Stockbridge  put  it,  they  jumped  on  his  wagon  before  he  was 
ready  to  start.  He  was  indeed  their  prophet,  who  led  them  out  of 
the  wilderness  of  speculation  into  the  light  of  practical  methods. 
As  might  be  expected,  this  new  conception  of  the  use  of  chemical 
manures — or  plant  food,  as  he  liked  to  call  it — not  only  revolution- 
ized all  our  notions  of  fertilization,  but  the  entire  fertilizer  business 
as  well.  It  immediately  raised  the  standard  of  commercial  manures 
from  ordinary  superphosphates,  containing  no  potash,  to  "complete 
manures,"  many  of  them  rich  in  potash.  Special  fertilizers  for 
special  crops  or  classes  of  crops  were  brought  out  by  various  makers, 
and  the  business  received  a  new  impetus  and  a  new  recognition  in 
the  community.  It  was  put  on  a  sound  footing,  from  which  it  can 
never  be  displaced. 

As  in  stock  feeding  we  chiefly  concern  ourselves  with  the  study  of 
the  animal  and  its  needs,  so  in  plant  feeding  we  must  make  an  in- 
telligent study  of  the  needs  of  the  living  crop.  As  we  know  how  to 
feed  the  cow  for  milk  or  beef,  so  we  must  know  how  to  feed  the  plant 
for  leaf  or  seed.  Not  only  must  we  know  the  amount  of  plant  food 
to  be  supplied,  based  on  crop  requirements,  but  the  form  and  asso- 
ciation of  the  different  elements  must  be  considered  ;  and  in  the 
study  of  this  problem  we  must  also  continue  to  study  the  soil,  its 
potential  fertility,  its  physical  and  chemical  characteristics,  and  par- 
ticularly the  lower  orders  of  life  which  it  contains,  the  bacteria  and 


*5 

other  unseen  forces.  In  short,  we  must  continue  our  study  of  all 
the  sources  and  forces  of  fertility,  to  the  end  that  we  may  know  what 
each  contributes  to  the  upbuilding,  not  necessarily  of  the  soil,  but  of 
the  crop  life  above  the  soil.  Thus  did  Stockbridge  teach  and 
practice. 

As  Stevenson  made  practical  the  discovery  of  Watts,  as  Singer 
improved  upon  the  invention  of  Howe,  so  Stockbridge  took  the 
teachings  of  Liebig  and  Johnson,  the  tables  of  Wolf,  and  the  experi- 
ments of  Goessmann,  Atwater  and  Sturtevant,  and  applied  them  to 
practical  and  useful  ends.  While  the  system  of  plant  feeding  which 
he  employed,  or  perhaps  I  should  say  the  method  of  application  as 
prescribed  in  his  formulas,  did  not  appeal  to  the  scientific  mind  in 
the  beginning,  it  did  appeal  to  the  practical  farmers,  for  it  met  their 
needs  as  no  other  method  ever  before  had  done.  As  good  practice 
and  good  science  must  agree  in  the  end,  so  I  believe  the  scientific 
world  is  coming  to  agree  with  the  practical  farmer  that  the  system 
and  the  method  of  application  for  which  Stockbridge  stood  and  la- 
bored is  as  truly^scientific  as  it  is  thoroughly  practical,  and  to  accord 
him  a  high  place  among  the  workers  for  the  advancement  of  scien- 
tific as  well  as  practical  husbandry. 


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